Heaven: A Prison Diary (6 page)

The police
drove him back to prison, and he’s never been out since.

My evenings are
now falling into a set pattern. I join Doug at six-thirty and have a bath,
before watching the seven o’clock news on Channel 4.

I report for
roll-call,
and then return to play a few games of backgammon
with Clive.

Final roll-call.

There are some
prisoners who prefer to remain in jail rather than be released: those who have
become institutionalized and have no family, no friends, no money and no chance
of a job. And then there is Rico.

Rico arrived at
NSC from Lincoln Prison this morning. It’s his fourth burglary offence and he’s
always welcomed back because he enjoys working on the farm. Rico particularly
likes the pigs, and by the time he left, he knew them all by name. He even used
to sleep with them at night – well, up until final roll-call. He has a single
room, because no one is willing to share with him. That’s one way of getting a
single room.

I check in at
SMU, but as there are no officers around I write for two hours.

I try to phone
Mary at Grantchester, but because the flash flood has taken the phones out, all
I get is a long burr.

On the way to
lunch, I pass Peter (lifer, arson), who is sweeping leaves from the road.

Peter is a
six-foot-
four,
eighteen-stone Hungarian who has served
over thirty years for setting fire to a police station, although no one was
killed.

I have lunch
with Malcolm (fraud) who tells me that his wife has just been released from
Holloway having completed a ninemonth sentence for money laundering. The
£750,000 he made was placed in her account without her knowledge (Malcolm’s words)
but she was also convicted. Malcolm asked to have her sentence added to his,
but the judge declined.

Wives or
partners are a crucial factor in a prisoner’s survival. It’s not too bad if the
sentence is short, but even then the partner often suffers as much, if not
more, being alone on the outside. In Mary’s case, she is now living her life in
a glare of publicity she never sought.

There’s a timid
knock on the door. I open it to find a prisoner who wants to talk about writing
a book (this occurs at least once a week). His name is Saman, and he’s a Muslim
Kurd. He is currently working on a book entitled
The History of Kurdistan,
and wonders if I’ll read a few chapters.
(Saman read engineering at a university in Kurdistan.) When he has completed his
sentence, Saman wants to settle down in this country, but fears he may be
deported.

‘Why are you at
NSC?’ I ask him.

Saman tells me
that he was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving, for which he was
sentenced to three years. He’s due to be released in December.

Today’s is my
mother’s birthday. She would have been eighty-nine.

After breakfast
I read
The Sunday Times
in the
library. Rules concerning newspapers differ from prison to prison, often without
rhyme or reason. At Wayland the papers were delivered to your cell, but you
can’t have your own newspaper at NSC.

While I’m
reading a long article on anthrax, another prisoner looks over his copy of the
News of the World
, and says, ‘I’m glad
to find out you’re earning fifty quid a week, Jeff.’ We both laugh. He knows
only too well that orderlies are paid £8.50 a week, and only those prisoners
who go out to work can earn more. Funnily enough, this sort of blatant
invention or inaccuracy has made my fellow inmates more sympathetic.

Phone Mary in
Grantchester and at last get a ringing tone. She’s just got back from Munich,
which she tells me went well. Not all the Germans are aware that her husband is
a convict. Her book,
Clean Electricity
from Photovoltaics
,
was received
by the conference with acclaim. After struggling for some years to complete
volume one, she ended up selling 907 copies. Mind you, it is £110 a copy, and
by scientific standards, that is a best-seller. I use up an entire phonecard
(twenty units) getting myself up to date with all her news.

A message over
the tannoy informs inmates that they can report to the drug centre for
voluntarily testing. A negative result can help with parole or tagging
applications. By the time I arrive, there’s already a long queue. I stand
behind Alan (fraud) who is being transferred to Spring Hill tomorrow. He says
he’ll write and let me know how the place compares to NSC and try and find out
how my application is progressing.

I reach the
head of the queue. Mr Vessey – he of the hatchet face who never smiles – points
to a lavatory so I can give him a sample of urine in a little plastic bottle.
He then places a filter into the bottle that will show, by five separate black
lines, if I am positive or negative, for everything from cannabis to heroin. If
two little black lines come up opposite each drug, then you’re clear, if only
one line appears, you’ve tested positive and will be up in front of the
governor first thing in the morning.

An inmate three
ahead of me tests positive for cannabis, and explodes when Mr Vessey says he’ll
be on report tomorrow. He storms out, mouthing expletives.
Mr
Vessey smiles.

My own test
comes up with only double lines, which is greeted with mock applause by those
still waiting in the queue.

‘And pour your
piss down the drain, Archer,’ says Mr Vessey. ‘If you leave it hanging around,
this lot would happily sell it to the
News
of the World.
‘

Lunch.
I’m joined by Brian (chapel orderly and organist). He
was convicted of conspiracy to defraud an ostrich farming company of seven
million pounds. His barrister convinced him that if he pleaded not guilty, a
trial could take ten months, and if he were then found guilty he might end up
with a six- or seven-year sentence. He advised Brian to plead guilty to a
lesser charge, so that he would be sentenced to less than four years.

He took the
advice, and was sentenced to three years ten months. His two co-defendants
decided on a trial and the jury found them not guilty. Brian considers that
pleading guilty was the biggest mistake of his life.

Write for two
hours.

I go to chapel
to be joined by five other prisoners. Brian the ostrich man is playing the
organ (very professionally). I take Holy Communion in memory of my mother, and
can’t help reflecting that it’s my first sip of wine in three months. The vicar
offers each of us a tiny plastic thimble of wine. It’s only later that I work
out why: some prisoners would attend the service just to drain the chalice.

The vicar, the
Rev Johnson, is over seventy. A short, dapper man, he gives us a short, dapper
sermon on why he is not quite sure about born-again Christians. We then pray
for those Christians who were murdered while taking part in a church service in
Pakistan.

Covering the
wall behind the altar and part of the ceiling is a painting of the Last Supper.

After the
service, the vicar tells me that a former prisoner painted it, and each of the
disciples was modelled on an inmate. He chuckles, ‘Only Christ isn’t a
convict.’

I wake early
and think about home. I have a little pottery model of the Old Vicarage on the
table in front of me, along with a photograph of Mary and the boys, and another
of a view of Parliament from our apartment in London; quite a contrast to the
view from my little room on the north block. The sky is grey and threatening
rain. That’s the one thing I share with you.

Breakfast with
Malcolm (fraud, chief librarian) and Roger (murder, twelve years so far).

Malcolm is able
to tell me more about the young man called Arnold who absconded last week. I
recall him from his induction at SMU, a shy and nervous little creature. He was
sharing a room with two of the most unpleasant men I’ve ever come across. One
of them has been moved from prison to prison during the past seven months
because of the disruption he causes wherever he goes, and the other is a heroin
addict serving out the last months of his sentence. I have never given a
moment’s thought to absconding.

However, if I
had to spend a single night with either of those men, I might have to
reconsider my position.

Today I set
myself the task of reorganizing the muddled and misleading notice board in the
waiting room. Matthew and I spend the first thirty minutes taking down all
thirtyseven notices, before deciding which are out of date, redundant or simply
on the wrong notice board. Only sixteen survive. We then pin up five new neatly
printed headings – drugs, education, leave, tagging and general information,
before replacing the sixteen posters neatly in their correct columns. By
lunchtime the waiting room is clean, thanks to Mr Clarke, and the notice board
easy to understand, thanks to Matthew, although I think I’ve also earned my 25p
an hour.

I have to
repeat that as far as prison food goes, NSC is outstanding. Wendy and Val (her
assistant) set standards that I would not have thought possible in any
institution that has only £1.27 per prisoner for three meals a day. Today I’m
down for the pizza, but Wendy makes me try a spoonful of her lamb stew, because
she doesn’t approve of my being a VIP (vegetarian in prison). It’s excellent,
and perhaps next week I’ll risk a couple of meat dishes.

The turnover at
NSC is continual. Last week fifteen inmates departed, one way or another: end
of sentence – twelve, moved to another prison – two, absconded – one. So after
only two weeks, 20 per cent of the prison population has changed. Give me
another month, and I’ll be an old lag.

While I’m
washing the teacups, Matthew tells me that his father has taken a turn for the
worse, and the governor has pushed his compassionate leave forward by a day.
He’ll be off to Canterbury first thing in the morning, so he can be at his
father’s bedside for the next ten days. He doesn’t complain about having to
spend the ten nights in Canterbury Prison (B-cat), which can’t be pleasant when
your father is dying, and you don’t have anyone to share your grief with.

Another pile of
letters awaits me when I return from work, among them missives from Chris de
Burgh, Patrick Moore and Alan Coren. Alan’s letter makes me laugh so much,
rather than share snippets with
you,
I’ve decided to
print it in full. (See overleaf.)

All my life I
have been graced with remarkable friends, who have tolerated my ups and downs,
and this latest episode doesn’t seem to have deterred them one iota.

Tomorrow I’m
going to the gym. I only write this to make sure I do.

Write for two
hours.

Alan Coren
26 October 2001

My dear
Jeffrey:

Lots of forgivenesses to be begged.
First off, forgive the
typing, but not only is my longhand illegible, I should also be writing for
some days, because I haven’t picked up a pen for anything but cheques since
about 1960.

More important,
try to forgive the fact that I haven’t written before, but the truth is that I
should so much have preferred to chat to you face to face
(
albeit
chained to a radiator, or whatever the social protocols required
) than to engage in the one-sided conversation of letters, so – – as you
probably know–I kept trying to get a visit, and kept being turned down. Most
important of all, forgive me for not trying to spring you: I have spent a small
fortune on grapnels, ropes, bolt-cutters, fake numberplates, one-way tickets to
Sao Paolo, and drinks for large men from the Mile End Road with busted conks
and tattooed knuckles, but whenever I managed to put all these elements
together, there was always a clear night and a full moon.

Anyway, I
gather from your office that it might now be possible to arrange a visit, once
I and they have filled in all sorts of bumf, and you have been given enough
notice to stick a jeroboam of Krug on ice and slip into a brocade dressinggown
and fez, so I shall set that in train forthwith–if, of couurse, you agree. You
are, by the way, bloody lucky not to be in that office now, these are bad days
to be living at the top of a tall building next to MI6 and opposite the H of C
– – and I speak as one who knows, having, as you’ll spot from the letterhead,
recently moved to a house in Regent’s Park; where, from my top-floor study
window as I type, I can see the Regent’s Park Mosque 500 metres to my right,
and the American Ambassador’s residence 500 metres to my left. I am ground
bloody zero right here: every time His Excellency’s helicopter trrobs in, we
rush down to the cellar.
Could by anybody, or anything.
Since even I don’t know where Freiston is, I rather doubt that Osama bin Laden
could find it, and you are further fortunate in the fact that, because every
envelope to the clink is doubtless slit open, poked about in and generally
vetted to the last square millimetre, if anybody’s going to get anthrax, it
won’t be you.

Life goes on in
London as normal: Anne and I have grown used to wearing our gas-masks in bed.
though
it’s still a bit of a bugger waking up in the night
and unthinkingly reaching for a bedside drink, so there’s more nocturnal
tumble-drying going on than there used to be. Giles and Victoria wish to be
remembered to you, and want you to know that they’re fine, and settling down
well with their foster parents in Timbuktu, where they tell me they have made
lots of new friends among the other evacuees, although HP sauce is proving
dificult to find. Your beloved Conservative Party has elected a new leader, who
may be seen every day at the doors of the Commons handing out his business
cards to MPs and officials who would otherwise think we was someone who had
turned up to flog them personal pension schemes.